..a stream of consciousness..

So this past Saturday marked the completion of the first strength cycle that the USAW team went through.  At the end of it, I found PR’s all over the place – and I also found a new respect for rest and sleep.  Almost the entire Bulgarian and Strength cycle, I’ve been operating on a lack of sleep due to early morning interning and late night lifting.  That combined with a complete lack of rest days (the academy / USAW ‘rest’ days happened to be bball league days) left me utterly destroyed by the end of the 3rd week.  The 4th week had a solid monday, and the rest of the week was either rest days, or days where I scaled back on the lifts/efforts.  I tried to get more sleep, skipped one or two of the AM interning sessions, and tried to hit it hard on Saturday during the max testing to close it out.  Here are some maxes that I put up Saturday, or the Saturday before… and the corresponding pre-strength cycle weights.

Back Squat – 285lbs to 300lbs (300 AFTER max Snatch and C&J attempts)
Overhead Squat – 185lbs to 215lbs (215 AFTER max Snatch and C&J attempts)
C&J – 220lbs to 230lbs
Snatch – 175lbs to 185lbs (would have had 190 if I got another attempt or two)

I probably should test out some more, but I’d say that’s pretty solid for 4 weeks of work.  Granted, I’m sure some of that was technique based, but improvement is improvement.  I don’t know how my metcon has held up outside of the 1 second, explosive lifts, but we will find out shortly.

I plan on going to a hybrid of several of the academy programs.  I’d like to spend 4 weeks or so knocking out ALL or as many of the benchmark ladies and warriors as possible, while mixing in sprints once a week, and o-lifting every now and then.  I haven’t settled on a particular schedule yet, but perhaps 1x a week of sprints, 2x a week of o-lift, 2x a week of benchmarks?  we will see…

now if only I could get a muscle-up.

~ by apexaddict6 on October 5, 2009.